HOLT TO MAKE AREA DEBUT

On the way to LaGuardia Airport to fly off first to Oklahoma, then to Kentucky and Tennessee, for appearances preceding his Ambassador Auditorium debut Monday night, American baritone Ben Holt spoke briefly about his current recital program.

Holt’s first Los Angeles-area recital, on the Gold Medal series at Ambassador, is fascinating in more than the fact that it marks the singer’s local debut in that genre (he has already sung with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Hollywood Bowl).

The program, for one thing. It features music by black composers in both halves. The recital opens with an aria from “Ernestine,” an opera by Joseph Boulogne, known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges. In the second half are two songs by George Walker (born 1922), two by the late Howard Swanson (1907-1978), and three spirituals as arranged by R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943).

The 29-year-old singer, who in the last year has made debut appearances at the Metropolitan Opera and at both Spoleto festivals (the one in South Carolina and the one in Italy) places this music, some of it unfamiliar, in a context of standard, although hardly hackneyed, repertory: arias by Purcell and Handel; lieder of Schubert, Schumann and Richard Strauss; and Ravel’s “Don Quichotte a Dulcinee.”

“George Walker, who is a professor at Rutgers, has written a trombone concerto, several piano concertos and a lot of chamber music,” Holt said. “His style is quite accessible, something like Barber’s. I might even say it is (Dominick) Argentoesquecq.

“Swanson’s music had a vogue in the 1940s and ‘50s. It is episodic, even more lyric than Walker’s, and reminiscent of Negro folk music.”

What kind of baritone does Holt consider himself? The soft-spoken singer answered by naming some of his operatic roles: “Figaro, Valentin, Marcello, Papageno. . . .”

And, he added, “eventually . . . Don Giovanni.” ON OUR SERIES: A new concert series, created specifically for the tercentenary year of Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti as well as quadricentenary year of Heinrich Schuetz, will be launched Saturday.

Beginning a series of six concert events running through November, Calvary Presbyterian Church of South Pasadena will offer a program of music by all four of the above-named composers on Saturday night at 8. Conductor Merle Moore will lead the Festival Chorus, vocal soloists, a small orchestra and organist John Paul Clark in Schuetz’s “Cantate Domino,” the Second Orchestral Suite and Cantata No. 189 by Bach, Handel’s Organ Concerto in B-flat, Opus 4, No. 2, and Domenico Scarlatti’s rarely heard “Stabat Mater.”

Subsequent festival events are scheduled Feb. 22 (an appearance by the Baroque ensemble Musical Offering), March 22 (a recital by organist Gillian Weir), April 27 (choral and instrumental music by Schuetz and Giovanni Gabrieli), Oct. 18 (a recital by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis) and Nov. 23 (Handel’s oratorio, “Jephtha”).

Meanwhile, in Westwood, the second event of the season in the series of the Southern California Early Music Society is a recital by soprano Mary Rawcliffe and fortepianist Joan Benson. Friday night at 8 in the organ studio of Schoenberg Hall at UCLA, Rawcliffe and Benson will present a program entitled “The Budding of Romanticism.” It lists songs by Haydn, Mozart, Samuel Wesley, Thomas Atwood and John Barrie and solo keyboard music by Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, John Field and Mendelssohn.

And, continuing its celebration of J. S. Bach’s anniversary year, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Bach Soloists will give three performances this week.

The 13-member ensemble, performing at the Embassy Theater on Wednesday night, in Bridges Hall of Music in Claremont on Thursday, and at Ambassador Auditorium on Saturday, will include in its program selections from Cantatas Nos. 32, 42, 53, 59, 68, 78, 115, 150, 180, 187 and 213, as well as an excerpt from the “Easter” Oratorio and the (complete) Sonata in A for violin and harpsichord, BWV 249. BRIEFLY: Speaking of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble has just received two major grants from local foundations. The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the orchestra a grant of $150,000 in support of a comprehensive, long-term program “to extend and strengthen the orchestra’s constituencies in Southern California.” At the same time, LACO has been awarded a grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, “in support of the orchestra’s consolidation of rehearsal services at the Embassy Theater.” . . . Andres Cardenes, the prize-winning American violinist who has been concertmaster of the Utah Symphony since 1982, has been appointed concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony. Cardenes, who was born in Cuba in 1957, came to this country a year later and trained under Josef Gingold, Nathan Milstein and the late Ivan Galamian, will take over his San Diego duties in November.